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The dangerous new Obama book

“That gave many people a first impression of Obama, won over a lot people. It was the vessel of a lot of the Kool-Aid that got drunk in 2008, creating a fantasy Obama that many people wanted to believe in. … I don’t think there are many people who are going to radically revise their impression of Obama” this time, he added.

During the 2008 Democratic primary, senior advisers to Hillary Clinton complained that they weren’t running against Obama the guy, his record, his policies or even his résumé, which they viewed with contempt as too thin to sustain a respectable national candidacy. No, the opponent they were facing was Obama’s narrative — a supremely powerful political marketing tool for a candidate whose mixed racial and class background served as a metaphor for American unity at one of the country’s most precarious moments.

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“We’re not running against a real person,” one of them said at the time. “We are running against a story.”

When Vanity Fair published excerpts of the book early Wednesday, the aggregation mob (including POLITICO) seized on a few potentially damaging and salacious disclosures, especially Obama’s portrayal of a white girlfriend he lived with in New York in the early 1980s. The relationship is chronicled in intimate detail (conjure the image, if you will, of Obama taking a shower with his girlfriend or lounging around a Brooklyn walk-up wearing only a sarong), but ultimately he rejects the woman as too wealthy, too out-of-touch and incapable of coping with the complexities of his mixed-raced reality.

The 1995 introduction to “Dreams” warned readers that Obama employed composite characters to shield the innocent and compress the narrative. But Maraniss tracked down the real woman, described by only her mannerisms and appearance, and identified by Obama only as his so-called “New York girlfriend.”

Genevieve Cook, it turned out, didn’t take to the role of acting as a catalyst for Obama’s personal transformation, the memoir equivalent of being offered a seat at the State of the Union address to make a policy point.

“During an interview in the Oval Office, Obama acknowledged that, while Cook was his New York girlfriend, the description in his memoir was a ‘compression’ of girlfriends, including one who followed Genevieve [Cook] when he lived in Chicago,” Maraniss writes.

But that revelation, while hardly flattering, isn’t exactly a tabloid blockbuster. It’s the underlying point that’s disquieting, that Obama has applied that same “compression” to his personal and political narrative.

Maraniss obtained Cook’s journal from those years, which included this startling description of Obama that hints at a powerful ambition and calculation familiar to many future Obama watchers.

Speaking directly to Obama in the diary, she wrote on March 9, 1984, that she had “a sense of you [Barack] biding your time and drawing others’ cards out of their hands for careful inspection — without giving too much of your own way — played with a good poker face. … I feel that you carefully filter everything in your mind and heart — legitimate, admirable, really. … But there’s something also there of smoothed veneer, of guardedness …”

“I’m still left with this feeling of … a bit of a wall — the veil.”

Carrie Budoff Brown contributed to this report.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story did not make clear that David Maraniss still works for The Washington Post as an associate editor.

Readers' Comments (929)

The success of “Dreams” has given Obama nearly complete control of his own life narrative — and the foundation of his political success. Maraniss’s biography threatens that narrative just as Obama is launching his bid for a second term.

No, the lack of the DC press' objectivity gave Obama nearly complete control of his own life narrative.......

The parts I have read of Mr. Maraniss's work confirmed what I thought about Barack Obama back in 2007....he is the typical narcissistic elite pol with no intentions of reform or progress. It was a waste these past 4 years, especially after the opportunity of the 2007 economic collapse gave our nation the wake-up call it needed to make true changes in how the fed does business.

Obama, like Bush did in 2001, gave us the same old DC solutions that fed special interests only to cement their own power. Another catastrophe will come along and we all must HOPE and choose leaders ready to do something good and real to change the dangerous course our nation is on.

The ship of state is going in the wrong direction.....it has for decades now......hope that it will be corrected is running out.

Obama is hardly a control freak when it comes to his personal life narrative. He ignored all hype about not being born in America for years. He ignored all the attacks about him being a commie socialist for months when the health care bill was being drafted, he ignored it to the point that many democrats became upset that he would not defind himself. It was not even so much a matter of him definding himself, he was sitting around letting all democrats get smeared by not setting the record straight. I understand that by not reacting it shows no guilt and that Obama totally understands the rightwing loons were not speaking truth, but still, he needed to defind his image and his parties image a lot faster and harder than he did. He has a problem with definding himself. He always wants to go the high road, even at the cost of control of his personal narrative.

In the handful of excerpts released so far, there are no new bombshells involving personal or political corruption or indiscretion beyond anything Obama has already revealed, though the book isn’t out until June 19.

Does this new book reveal the FACT that Obama engaged in "personal corruption" when he approached convicted felon and slum lord Tony Rezko to help him purchase his 9,0000 sq. ft. mansion in the rich elite 1% section of Hyde Park?

Isn't it a amazing how liberal/progressives like Diane Sawyer can ask Mitt around a 30 year old story about his dog and yet no one in our dirty MSM Wolf Pac press has ever asked Obama about his dirty deal with slum lord, Tony Rezko.

What's wrong with this picuture? Obama is right we need more "fairness" in America and maybe we can start with "fair" reporting of our political leaders by clean Journalists........wouldn't that be wonderful........................."Perceptions has a dream today..........that one day our Press can write and report stories on political candidates in a "fair" non-partisan way.......................Perceptions has a Dream today......."

He ignored all hype about not being born in America for years. He has ignored all the attacks about him being a socialist for months when the health care bill was being drafted, he ignored it to the point that many democrats became upset that he would not defind himself

Well he can't ignore the FACT he engages in personal corruption with Tony Rezko. His dirty MSM Super Wolf Pac press pals might not want to bring it up...........................................but we will.

The Rezko Connection: Obama's Achilles Heel? - ABC News

[Jan 9, 2008] Obama had known Rezko long before the house deal, calling him a "friend." An ABC News review of campaign records shows Rezko, and people connected to him, contributed ... ( 196 Comments )

So we get a POTUS who is fixated on race and class in America and reflects that in his personal relationships and road to power? Who knew? He reflects it in practically every speech.......Detached, aloof and spock like.

No wonder our economy is still a mess and unemployment is still high. But we have social justice to keep us warm.......

Just maybe, this time when we vote in November, we should remember to vote for the guy who is fixated on our economic improvement, is PRO BUSINESS , who has a program to build jobs, and one getting something done for ALL Americans. And that would be Romney.

Seems like Obama still has to work through his class envy issues and a few other things rather than running the nation for a second term. We need to vote with our wallet in 2012.

President Obama is a great divider, that is for sure. The federal debt will have risen by $6 trillion in his term. He is a profligate spender whose administration forecasts huge deficits for years, even decades, and that the federal debt will increase by another $4 trillion by 2016. He aggravated the federal government's fiscal position with the biggest expansion of entitlement programs in two generations with his Obamacare program. He offers zero leadership to reform Social Security and Medicare, which have over $50 trillion in unfunded liabilities. He refuses to try to implement policies proposed by his own bipartisan federal debt commission. With his fiscal policy ineptitude it is hard to imagine Mr. Obama being more divisive, or grossly unfair to the nation's youth, and yet to be born citizens, who will bear the costs of his government's onerous spending and borrowing.

Well, i'm voting for Obama again and a good friend from Florida is voting for him for a first time come Nov. 2. He voted for McCain in 2008. He thinks Obama has done a good enough job to earn a second term, stocks at all time high in 4 years and he got a nice raise from his new job this year, his life like many Americans are getting better. It's been slow, but it is at last getting better. He is also turned off my rightwing hyperbole and he has deemed Mitt a tool. So, I'm not too worried. I don't personally know anyone who voted for Obama who plans on voting for Mittens. The Fed has predicted unemployment will be in the 7% range somewhere come the end of this year. 3 1/2 years ago we were looking at a 25% unemployment rate predicted by almost all economist both left and right, if bold action was not taken. First Bush and then Obama set in motion the bank baiklouts, recovery act, and car bailouts. Once Bush was out the republicans turn on Obama like a snake for pushing threw those bills and actions, but they have started to prove very wise choices made by Obama, I glad he held firm. Cheers to him! Cheers to my 401k which was worth dirt when Bush handed the country over to obama, now it is worth a lot! Cheers to keeping my job, and cheers to my work place hiring 200 new people this year!

The "David" has always been the 99% of poor and middle class Americans that Obama has been fighting for his ENTIRE life who have seen their fortunes crushed during the GEORGE BUSH years by the greedy 1% that Mitt Romney represents.

The "David" has always been the 99% of poor and middle class Americans that Obama has been fighting for his ENTIRE life who have seen their fortunes crushed during the GEORGE BUSH years by the greedy 1% that Mitt Romney represents.

Hate to burst your bubble but even Bloomberg published an article that Obama has failed to improve the plights of the middle class. People vote with their wallets. But sure, Obama had some rich girlfriends he spurned too because they were 1 percenters. Mostly international 1 percenters, but then again most of his friends were pakistani's...........

Bloomberg-As a candidate in 2008, Obama blamed the reversals largely on the policies of Bush and other Republicans. He cited census figures showing that median income for working-age households -- those headed by someone younger than 65 -- had dropped more than $2,000 after inflation during the first seven years of Bush’s time in office.

Yet real median household income in March was down $4,300 since Obama took office in January 2009 and down $2,900 since the June 2009 start of the economic recovery, according to an analysis of census data by Sentier Research, an economic- consulting firm in Annapolis, Maryland.

First, we don't have to worry that any book will greatly influence an American election: most Americans don't read books (unless forced to at school). They certainly don't rush out to buy dense political biographies written by authors with an eye to long-range historical value. (How many books need to be sold to have a bestseller? A hundred thousand?)

Second, from the previews, I like what Mr. Maraniss says about President Obama. Who ever thought Obama was and is a happy accident? Maraniss describes Obama as thoughtful, intuitive, willful, shrewd, ambitious, deliberate, cautious, calculating -- all qualities I want in my president.

Even the implied criticism that Obama is a "control freak," "a man who doesn't want to utter words he thinks he couldn't have honestly written himself," is a compliment: it signifies integrity and authenticity. How nice it is to have a president that writes some of his own speeches and creates elaborate blueprints for the rest of his speeches his speechwriters flesh out.

When we have a Press that ignores critical aspects of this man's life. When we have a Press that works hard to defend this man. When we have a Press that will attack anyone who dares criticize this man. When we have a Press that focuses on vetting everyone BUT this man, you get what you get!

The US Press would have NEVER put up with Barack Obama if his name was George W Bush and if he looked differently. That's a matter of fact.

2007-2009 the US was in free fall because of the great recession. Hardly Obama's fault. By 2012 he have gone up about $2000 from where we were at our low in 2009 which you are pointing to. Things are getting better.

2007-2009 the US was in free fall because of the great recession. Hardly Obama's fault. By 2012 he have gone up about $2000 from where we were at our low in 2009 which you are pointing to. Things are getting better.

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Unemployment is higher today than it was at any point in the Bush years.

Debt is $16 Trillion dollars - $6 Trillion have been added by this Administration in less than 4 years.

The deficit is over a trillion dollars.

Misery Index is higher today than it was under Bush.

Gas Prices - Higher

People filing for unemployment benefits - 350,000 every week.

23 Million people don't have jobs.

We are now fighting in Pakistan, Yemen, Libya, Uganda, Central Africa, Congo, and are prepared to fight Iran and Syria.

If this is your version of "things are getting better", you need to go back to sleep, sweetdreams!

The US Press would have NEVER put up with Barack Obama if his name was George W Bush and if he looked differently. That's a matter of fact.

Personally as an Indie I vote on Presidential performance for a 2nd term and I could care less what the man looks like as long as the ALL the nation is prospering and safe. Obama is a nice guy but is in over his head on the economy and isn't pro business.

Others do care on the politics of his skin. The CBC does. And Black unemployment is still high at 15%.

Unhappy members of the Congressional Black Caucus “probably would be marching on the White House” if Obama were not president, according to CBC Chairman Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.).

“If [former President] Bill Clinton had been in the White House and had failed to address this problem, we probably would be marching on the White House,” Cleaver told “The Miami Herald” in comments published Sunday.

In 2008 candidate Obama sat before the editorial boards of the Chicago Sun-Times and the Chicago Tribune and answered every question they had about this--and the boards were satisfied with his answers. That is why that issue died--because there is no there there.

Nice try to fix yesterday's terrible and false reporting suggesting that Obama lied in his memoir with today's mysterious story about what a book that hasn't been released yet might say about the president. Is the competition for news so great that you make up a story on one day that is false and on the next day speculate about what a book, that hopefully will be read in its entirety, actually says? Are you guys so hard up for news that you are now peddling fiction for fact?